A change of pace.

Hi there,

Another Pigeon Bomb missive from the gorgeous Jamie.

I have a tournament this weekend.  In fact quite a few of the Stevenage Wargamer massive do.
Bunker Brawl 20th October.
http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=114722 

A small 2000 pt uncomped 1 dayer in Chelmsford.  I have decided to crack open the Empire and it will be my first tournament using them.  As a consequence of this tournament based activity I have had to do a spot of hardcore army painting.  Hellcannons unfortunately have to wait.  :(

I should make the deadline with, what I believe, is a decent standard of painting.  Definitely a cut above your average speedpaint.  I even have some kitbashing and minor conversion work to add a bit of spice.  The army as a whole doesnt really have a theme, it is more about achieving a consistent painting standard and colour scheme.  If I was pressed to say where my inspiration came from for the army then I would have to say a religious Sigmar based force.  Veteran Crusaders if you will.  I believe this is pretty much one of the only obvious concrete themes that can be done with the Empire.  I wish the book had more in the way of non-generic choices to back it up but the units by their very nature do not unfortunately.  Correct me if I am wrong but I just dont see it. 

I am not going to display the whole army on here yet.  For now, here is a Steam Tank, the idea was to go for Liberachian over the top detail.  I apologise for more snow basing but it seems to be my current 'thing'. 

The Steam Tank is particularly interesting as I have attempted to create some Sigmar based gold murals to the sides.  I originally planned to freehand paint these and try and blend into the modelled adornments that come with the kit.  I wasnt too sure how this would gel together so I opted instead to try and raid the bits box and go for something more 3d.

On one side we have the light of Sigmar burning away the Undead.  The other has a large comet/fireball as the central motif.  To achieve both of these it mainly involved slicing in half seperate elements from various sprues.  The skeleton in particular was quite fiddly.  The tiny nicks on the tips of my thumbs will testify.  :(  The paintjob blends it all together. 

If I get my shit together the next post will be a battle report.  Showing off some glimpses of the rest of the army and how it fared in my games.

Till then I best get back to painting.  :/

INSPIRATION CORNER.

http://grzegorzgwiazda.blogspot.co.uk/

A sculptor.  Not miniature based but by golly is that some impressive and expressive work.   Fantastic reference as well for Object Sourced Lighting and musculature.  Awesome stuff.  :)

Till next time.

Hell's Cannon (WIP)

Hi there!  Its Jamie again.  Time for another Throgg Monster Mash update. 

Whilst the Hellcannon model isn’t necessarily a bad one from GW’s history it never really screamed ‘caged Demon’ at me.  It seemed like they always had it the wrong way around.  Instead of a Demon shoehorned into a cannon it should have been more like a cannon shoehorned into a…. Unbelievably I may have found a use for a Vortex Beast…

True story.  I had no idea that sawing the end off the Hellcannon model was going to fit perfectly inside the space where the face should be on a Slaughterbrute.  In fact I had assembled the entire body and stuck it to the base before I ever held them up against each other to see.  Those being kind would possibly say that being a relatively experienced converter of miniatures my trained eye did the work for me.  Those unkind would just call it a fluke.  The unkind ones would be right and I am not entirely sure why I let that happen.  Onwards and upwards....

The base is interesting as it gives me a chance to reveal what I am planning across the army.  A Chaos riddled rampaged Empire settlement.  The eagle eyed amongst you may notice that the ground has been ripped open. Tzeentch Horror arms grasp at the passing Hellcannon like zombies rising from the grave.  The Hellcannon itself grasps a broken statue, also tainted by raw chaos.  The ripped open ground was made from two resin chariot bases from MicroArt Studio’s Chaos range.  Chopped up with Milliput worked around it to fill the gaps and to flesh out the rest of the ground.   Additional elements came from the Games Workshop graveyard terrain set.
All in all I am very happy with how this turned out.  It’s big enough and impressive enough to warrant the statline and will be a nice centrepiece for the army. 

INSPIRATION CORNER.

I love 8 bit graphics.  The vibrancy, simplicity and ingenuity of creating recognisable art from a limited palette and pixel count impresses me.  If you agree then you will probably love this.

https://flipboard.com/section/pixel-art-bQSw17 

There is lots to see and do here so browse around and soak up the atmosphere.  Click the sides of the screen to view the next page. 

Till next time.  Enjoy.

The first of many... You lucky people!

Welcome to the collective blog for the Stevenage Wargamers.
If a member has a voice then I provide the soapbox....

No 1... (Jamie).

For a long time now I have almost forgotten what it is I truly enjoy about Miniature Wargaming.  Dont get me wrong I haven't had a touch of the hobby wobbles, lets just say I have had a recent epiphany.
I was stuck in a hobby rut.  Caught in an endless cycle of painting miniatures purely for tournament builds; I ended up speed painting my life away and generally getting burnt out with the act of rushing models to a poor state of completion.  Throw in the fact that actually having decent tournament attendance was proving problematic and you can see why I needed a change.



With this new mindset firmly in... mind, I hit upon the glorious idea of doing a themed Warhammer army.  Not just an artistic theme but sticking as closely as possible to a themed build without putting together a list that couldnt fight it's way out of a paper bag.

Ergo....

 Some Trolls gain extra limbs, others have a scary visage.  Throgg on the other hand gained.... brains.  So much so that he hit upon the idea of taking all the beasts and monsters roaming Troll Country and gathered them together into a shambling horde of mass destruction!

In case you really havent guessed it I am doing everyone's favorite themed army.  No humans, Daemon Princes, Skullcrushers or Wizards of any kind.  In fact, no characters other than the big guy himself - Throgg.

Took me a while to paint as I needed to work out the colour palette.  Whilst I genuinely don't mind the GW paintjob I never like to copy wholesale.  Getting a bit excited for starting; I never think too hard about the colours beforehand and so dive straight in and spend an inordinate amount of time painting and repainting in different tones and hues till I am happy.  Even then it takes a few days to get used to my own colour scheme.  :)  The defining moment was using Hellion Green to tint the pale skintone.  Before that I struggled to make the blue scaly bits truly pop.  I do feel that I have managed to keep it consistent with how the Games Workshop portray him whilst still adding my own take.

The basing is.... simple.  Fortunately this was intentional.  Seeing as I think this is one of the best character models GW has produced in recent times, and the crux of the whole army, it seemed appropriate to let the sculpt do the talking.  I will tell more about my plans for bases and unit fillers in future posts.  The intention is that this army will be something I can truly feel proud of.  A simple snow base is merely the slightest hint of what's to come. 

Any questions about the painting/basing/army concept please feel free to post a comment.  I would love to hear from you, like most artists, I dont mind sharing the knowledge.  In fact I find it rather flattering.  :)

OH YES!  Before I forget....

INSPIRATION CORNER.

A colleague of mine sent this around work.  I think anyone with an interest in post apocalyptic landscapes will dig it.  Especially as this one is in the real world.  :)

Google recently took a trip to the abandoned mining island of Hashima (Gunkanjima) in Japan.

Click on the link below to go to Google Earth and do Street View on this puppy and start wandering. 

 https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Gunkanjima&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF-8&ei=N33NUYGxIaK30QXTk4CwBA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAg

Reminds me very much of playing Myst and Riven on CDROM back in the day except with better graphics and a different setting.  :)

If anyone knows of any other cool unusual places to wander around on Google Earth then definitely share the knowledge. 


Till next time......
Jamie